When I had said what I wanted to say, and, losing my courage, turned to the door, she cried after me:
“Wait!”
Placing the cup on the tray, throwing the book on the table, and folding her hands, she said in a husky, grown-up voice:
“What a funny boy you are!
Come closer!”
I approached very cautiously. She took me by the hand, and, stroking it with her cold, small fingers, said:
“Are you sure that no one sent you to tell me this? No?
All right; I see that you thought of it yourself.”
Letting my hand go, she closed her eyes, and said softly and drawingly:
“So that is how the soldiers speak of me?”
“Leave this place,” I advised her earnestly.
“Why?’
“They will get the better of you/’
She laughed pleasantly. Then she asked:
“Do you study?
Are you fond of books?”
“I have no time for reading.”
“If you were fond of it, you would find the time.
Well, thank you.”
She held out a piece of silver money to me, grasped between her first finger and her thumb. I felt ashamed to take that cold thing from her, but I did not dare to refuse. As I went out, I laid it on the pedestal of the stair-banisters.
I took away with me a deep, new impression from that woman. It was as if a new day had dawned for me. I lived for several days in a state of joy, thinking of the spacious room and the tailor’s wife sitting in it, dressed in pale blue and looking like an angel.
Everything around her was unfamiliarly beautiful. A dull-gold carpet lay under her feet; the winter day looked through the silver panes of the window, warming itself in her presence.
I wanted very much to look at her again. How would it be if I went to her and asked her for a book?
I acted upon this idea. Once more I saw her in the same place, also with a book in her hand; but she had a red handkerchief tied round her face, and her eyes were swollen.
As she gave me a book with a black binding, she indistinctly called out something.
I went away feeling sad, carrying the book, which smelt of creosote and aniseed drops.
I hid it in the attic, wrapping it up in a clean shirt and some paper; for I was afraid that my employers might find it and spoil it.
They used to take the
“Neva” for the sake of the patterns and prizes, but they never read it. When they had looked at the pictures, they put it away in a cupboard in the bedroom, and at the end of the year they had been bound, placing them under the bed, where already lay three volumes of
“The Review of Painting.”
When I washed the floor in the bedroom dirty water flowed under these books.
The master subscribed to the
“Russian Courier,” but when he read it in the evening he grumbled at it.
“What the devil do they want to write all this for?
Such dull stuff!”
On Saturday, when I was putting away the linen in the attic, I remembered about the book. I undid it from its wrappings, and read the first lines:
“Houses are like people; they all have physiognomies of their own.”
The truth of this surprised me, and I went on reading farther, standing at the dormer-window until I was too cold to stay longer. But in the evening, when they had gone to vespers, I carried the book into the kitchen and buried myself in the yellow, worn pages, which were like autumn leaves. Without effort, they carried me into another life, with new names and new standards, showed me noble heroes, gloomy villains, quite unlike the people with whom I had to do.
This was a novel by Xavier de Montepaine. It was long, like all his novels, simply packed with people and incidents, describing an unfamiliar, vehement life.
Everything in this novel was wonderfully clear and simple, as if a mellow light hid — den between the lines illuminated the good and evil. It helped one to love and hate, compelling one to follow with intense interest the fates of the people, who seemed so inextricably entangled.
I was seized with sudden desires to help this person, to hinder that, forgetting that this life, which had so unexpectedly opened before me, had its existence only on paper. I forgot everything else in the exciting struggles. I was swallowed up by a feeling of joy on one page, and by a feeling of grief on the next.
I read until I heard the bell ring in the front hall. I knew at once who it was that was ringing, and why.
The candle had almost burned out. The candle-stick, which I had cleaned only that morning, was covered with grease; the wick of the lamp, which I ought to have looked after, had slipped out of its place, and the flame had gone out.
I rushed about the kitchen trying to hide the traces of my crime. I slipped the book under the stove-hole, and began to put the lamp to rights.
The nurse caine running out of the sitting-room.
“Are you deaf?
They have rung!”
I rushed to open the door.
“Were you asleep?” asked the master roughly. His wife, mounting the stairs heavily, complained that she had caught cold. The old lady scolded me.
In the kitchen she noticed the burned-out candle at once, and began to ask me what I had been doing.